AFO|Wealth Management Forward

Rob and Rory speak with the CEO and co-founder of Trust & Will, Cody Barbo. Trust & Will has helped over 200,000 families start their estate plan using their online technology and have transformed the way families plan for their future through affordable and straightforward estate planning. Cody describes the motivation behind creating a modern, intuitive, and affordable solution as an alternative to high-priced attorneys and inefficient processes. He emphasizes the affordability and accessibility of their estate planning platform, which has a Turbo Tax type experience that can be completed in 30 to 45 min. He talks about the importance of having a Trust if you have a property so that it doesn’t fall into probate. We discuss how the world is becoming digital and how Cody has been leading the charge for legislation that allows digital signatures of Will’s, which has recently passed and adopted in a few states. Learn about the basics of estate planning: Trusts, Wills, Guardianship, and Health Care Directives. For Advisors, find out how you can utilize Trust & Will to offer your clients these value-added estate planning services. Whether you need to set up an estate plan for the first time or update an existing one, you won’t want to miss this episode.

Rory and Mark are joined by Maria Quinn, a National Speaker and Senior Member of the Thought Leadership team in Vanguard Financial Advisor Services. Maria joined Vanguard in 2013 and has held a variety of roles serving Vanguard’s high-net-worth retail and financial advisor clients. In this podcast, Maria highlights the importance of establishing strong relationships and building trust with the clients and their families (spouse and children) to ensure the protection of assets while minimizing potential tax impacts in intergenerational wealth transfer. She also touches on the pending tax law changes, sharing her advice on what accounting firms can do in preparation. Listen to this podcast and find out what Maria has to say about intergenerational wealth transfer and don’t miss her explanation on how to get over public speaking fears, hint hint “Know thy Content and Know thy Audience." Don't miss this informative and engaging episode!

Rory and Rob are joined by Univ. Michigan and UCLA Law School Grad Ryan Schumacher, a private, professional trustee and attorney with Lorenz Private Trustees. Learn about the importance of a fiduciary as a person who stands in a special relation of trust, confidence, or responsibility in their obligations to others. In this episode, Ryan discusses the three options people use when using a trustee: 1.) A family member or friend 2.) Bank or trust company and lastly 3.) A professional private fiduciary. He talks about flexibility, operational efficiency, and independence as just a few of the benefits of using a professional private fiduciary. He provides the reasons why accountants, advisors, and attorneys may want to avoid taking on the role of trustee, just as he doesn’t advise people to hire him to be their dentist or plumber. Find out why Ryan decided to stop practicing law to start working for clients as a fiduciary private trustee. If you are an accountant, advisor, or attorney looking for advice on hiring a private trustee, you won’t want to miss this episode.

In this episode, Rory and Rob are joined by Tanya Van Court, a former ESPN, and Nickelodeon executive and the founder of Goalsetter. Goalsetter is an educational-based financial literacy app that teaches kids and teens finance through games, memes, and pop culture. This episode focuses on Tanya’s passion for teaching children and students of all ages how to invest and how she strives to close the wealth gap in America through her educational-based fintech platform. Tanya begins her discussion by highlighting how 90% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the third generation and asserts that all families should create an environment at home where the children are continuously learning about money. Tanya also discusses how Goalsetter has been working with schools, educational providers, and large corporations to promote early financial education and expose children to the concept of investing in a fun and more child-friendly way. Tanya also speaks on Goalsetter’s partnership with the NBA Players Association to draft kids across America to create Goalsetter accounts and to inspire a million African American and Latino kids to start saving. Listen to hear how Tanya used her background in gamification, multimedia, entertainment, and education and past experiences to create a financial education platform that will teach parents and kids how to better manage their finances.

Rob and Rory are joined by the Chief Growth Officer of Holistiplan, Chris Fields. Holistiplan is a technology used by thousands of advisors to efficiently and effectively scale their business through tax planning strategies. He is also an author and CEO/founder of the mercy project, a nonprofit organization using sustainability and empowerment to help rescue children out of slavery in Ghana. In this episode, Fields highlights how incorporating holistic wealth management into your firm can deepen your relationship with clients by reassuring them you are making financial decisions in their best interest. He describes how advisors can use Holistiplan’s technology to read tax returns in minutes to create clean and easy-to-read client deliverables. Fields advise listeners to be leaders rather than followers and adopt these tax planning strategies now to ensure you are providing the most comprehensive financial advice for your clients. He also discusses some of the features that Holistiplan has incorporated to ease concerns people have with using their software, such as cyber security, and how these features can make clients more comfortable. This is sure to be an episode you don’t want to miss, especially if you are considering adopting a tax planning strategy for your business.

Rory and Rob are joined by Donny Shimamoto CPA, CITP, CGMA. He is the Managing Director for IntrapriseTechknowlogies, the Inspiration Architect for The Center for Accounting Transformation, and is the AICPA Chair for the National Conference of Lawyers and CPAs. In this episode, Donny talks about his work helping accountants with technology, business practices, and risk management through the adoption of technology and outsourcing. Find out about the AICPA’s, CPA Horizons Project 2025, and why they decided to remove “accounting services” when describing the profession. Donny also talks about how small and midsize accounting firms were crucial during the pandemic and how they play a vital role in powering the small business economy. Get insights on the flood of Venture back money and its drive towards market acquisition, his thoughts on ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Reporting, and why it can be advantageous to choose the safety of people over profit. Learn about the importance of recognizing patterns, as Donny explains the evolution of technology from The Mainframe to Cloud Computing to now Blockchain and AI. Lastly, find out why it’s important to treat technology with a “Glass Half Full” mindset while you surf the technological wave of change. Check out this informative and entertaining can’t miss episode!

In this episode, Rory and Diane Young, Managing Director at Arrowroot Family Office, are joined by Dr. Daniel Crosby, Chief Behavioral Officer at Orion Advisor Solutions, a leading turnkey Asset Management Platform that serves over 2100 Firms. He has a Ph.D. in Psychology from BYU, and he recently co-authored a New York Times Best-Selling Book titled Personal Benchmark: Integrating Behavioral Finance and Investment Management. In this episode, Daniel talks about the 3 E’s that finance professionals need to use when advising clients: Education, Environment, and Encouragement. As advisors, we need to educate our clients, set up the right environments and offer encouragement like personal trainers and nutritionists do. Find out why he believes we are working with an iPhone 1 brain in an iPhone 13 world since it’s been 150,000 to 200,000 years since our brains have been upgraded. We were designed to keep ourselves from scarcity and starvation but live in a world where, at least in the West, more people die of obesity than starvation. Daniel also touches on the importance of making financial decisions when in the right state of mind and uses the Acronym HALT to communicate how people make statistically worse decisions when they are (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired). Find out how research on criminals in the Norwegian Underworld has shown how people spend, save, and invest their money differently based on how they generate it. Don’t miss out on this exciting episode to learn more about the human condition and how we view and interact with money.

This episode features Rory with special guest Guy Pearson, the founder, and CEO of Practice Ignition, a technology company focusing on assisting accounting and bookkeeping firms by offering online proposals, automated billing, and other useful managerial tools. Practice Ignition works with over 5000 firms globally, with offices in Australia, New Zealand, UK, the US, and Canada. He touches on the differences in technology and how the US is few years behind their Australian and New Zealand counterparts, from real-time bank data feeds to their online filing system with AGI, which they’ve had since the ’90s. Guy talks about how technology enables firms to segment information to better understand their client base. Though robots are far from having qualitative conversations and identifying exactly what clients need, automated platforms such as Practice Ignition have allowed accounting firms to boost revenue and client satisfaction because of their bundled services. In this episode, Guy also lays out the foundation of what he looks for when deciding whether or not to invest in a company as an angel investor, emphasizing the importance of finding founders who have felt the pain of what they’re trying to solve. What makes an Uber driver more appealing to people than their accountant? Find out in Guy and Rory’s insightful discussion this episode. You can’t miss it!

In this episode, Rory and Managing Director at Arrowroot Family Office, Mark McCarron, are joined by Nick Sinclair, the founder of TOA Global. TOA Global is an outsourcing business that is 100% dedicated to serving accounting firms. They work with over 600 accounting firms globally, providing them with exceptional, highly-skilled offshore industry professionals at around a 70% cost saving. Nick identifies how communication and the large supply of accountants coming out of university make the Philippines an ideal location for offshoring accountants. He also emphasizes the importance of leadership, proper pay, office culture, and mentorship related to employee retention and attracting talent. With today’s growing influx of VC money from the $50 Million Series B round for startup Vic.ai to the $100 Million Round by Jeff Bezos in Pilot, Nick advises small and midsize accounting firms to “double down on the client experience.” Despite technology’s advancements, accountants will always be needed because clients still desire an expert opinion; therefore, it is imperative to keep the client journey seamless and use technology as an enabler. Nick also touches on key strategies for talent acquisition, the focus on adding value to a client through financial planning, and much more. Don’t miss out on these key insights as well as Nick’s outlook on the future of the profession. Listen to the episode now!

In this episode, Rob and Rory speak with the Director of Sales at Redtail Technology, David Mehlhorn. Redtail Technology is a core financial services solution offering thousands of advisors daily assistance with running their businesses. As the first cloud-based CRM for financial advisors, they continue to revolutionize the client-advisor relationship through a robust feature set that integrates with hundreds of industry partners. Mehlhorn provides insight into the onboarding process and emphasizes the importance of repeatable processes that helps establish a great user experience. He also explains how using their technology can enhance a firm’s marketing efforts by getting the right information in front of the right people at the right time. Mehlhorn also discusses the competitive advantage Redtail has over larger CRM platforms since they have specifically tailored their solution for financial advisors and have years of customer feedback to support it. David touches on how redtail integrates with over 20 planning software solutions to help advisors communicate that holistic picture to clients. Whether you are looking to adopt a cloud-based platform for your firm or you simply want to learn more about what Redtail has to offer, this is not an episode you want to miss!